Paris: Editions Dilecta, 2018
30.5 x 25.5 3.5cm black clamshell box content of a 30 x 25cm, unpaginated artist's book displaying photographs of children from a group class image. A torn part of a silkscreen image of the original photograph tipped on to board. A photograph that has been overprinted in silver such that to see the image one has to scratch away the coating. And a certificate of authenticity numbered and signed by the artist tipped onto the lid of the box.
This is one of 170 signed and numbered copies (with 30 HC copies). VG+ with unscratched photograph.

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Paris. Editions Dilecta, 2014
32 x 22 x 5cm, two part heavy cardboard box with printed label content of:

a 17 x 24cm book which contains ten 13 x 18cm, full colour lenticular images tipped onto each page such that one can see two different images when the page is angled towards or away from the viewer.
a 54 x 36cm 4PP full colour artist's broadside folded to 27 x 36cm
a further 13 x 18cm lecticular photograph set into the lid of the box using photocorners
a signed and numbered 21 x 15cm, 1pp colophon sheet.

Deliuxe artist's book based on images found in the Wehrmacht magazine "Signal" that Boltanski bought at flea markets in Paris. Previously issued as a signed and numbered print, Boltanski here matches up images such that a war related photograph has a corresponding "normal" life image (often pretty girls enjoying themselves).
This is one of only 170 numbered and signed copies (with 20 HC copies also retained by the artist and 10 artist's proofs). VG+.

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Paris: Edition MF, 2012
23 x 18.5cm slipcase with embossed lettering. Content of 4 x 6pp folded 22.5 x 17cm sheets and one outer folder - 22 x 18.5cm, 4pp all on card. The poems are by Christian Boltanski’s nephew and the images (distorted b/w portraits of a woman) are by the uncle.
This is one of ONLY 50 copies which were signed and numbered by the writer and artist. Fine. Scarce.

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Two part black cardboard box with title label content of a 23 x 17cm, 160 piece card game where various photographs of the artist, author and portraits from the Louvre can be mixed up top and bottom to create new combinations of faces. The card game in this example is still in shrink wrap and unopened. JOINT WITH: LES HABITANTS DU LOUVRE Paris, Dilecta/Musée du Louvre, 2009 23 x 17.5cm, 120pp plus printed boards including 40 illustrations b/w. This first edition of the artist's book lists all of the artists found in the museum alphabetically within various rather contrived groupings. Boltanski has added 40 constructions where b/w reproductions of portraits of artists and employees of the museum have been cut up and recombined with half of the upper faces being attached to a different artist/employee's lower face - much like a children's card game. This is one of only 40 examples and X H.C. copies which are signed by both artist and Jacques Roubaud. VG++. ...

Paris, Editions 591, 2008. 22.3 x 17 cm, two part metal box with printed label content two volumes of the catalogue raisonne of Boltanski's artist's books by Bob Calle along with an original appropriated photograph of two young men (possibly from the 1940s but exact date is unknown). This is one of only 36 examples (26 numbered copies and 10 HC examples) each signed and numbered by Boltanski (as is the photograph in the issued passpartou). VG+. ...

München. Gina Kehayoff. 2000 31 x 29.2cm, printed folder with ribbon content of 29 cardboard pages with mounted (photo corners) colour photographs of the various installations by the three artists in a former sanatorium outside Berlin. Additionally there is a large colour poster showing the layout of the project and a text in English by Ilya Kabakov.,br. There is also a colophon sheet tipped onto the inside back of the folder signed and numbered by all three artists in pencil. One of of 69 deluxe copies. VG+.

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Kõln: Salon Verlag, 1999
17 x 12cm, 32pp. plus slightly oversize wrappers. There are 30 b/w portraits of young men and women in their teens placed on a graph-lined back ground and their dates of birth with a space for their later death dates. All the people were born in the mid 70s. One of 1,000 numbered copies. VG+.

INSERTED AS ISSUED:
17 x 12cm, 1pp single lined sheet with an original photograph of a young man tipped on - the image that was used in the book. The back of the sheet is signed in pen by Boltanski. The sheet is in a glassine envelope.
This is one of the first 50 numbered copies of the book and the image used corresponds to the page of the same number - here 15 - hence each deluxe copy (up to number 30) has the original photograph used for the publication.

So Schnell translates to "So Fast" perhaps a reference to how quickly time passes, All in original printed slipcase.VG+. ...

Paris: Yvon Lambert 1996
41 x 30.6cm, outer folder eight 40 x 30cm, 1pp b/w reproductions of appropriated photographs printed on semi-opaque paper and with eight transparent 40 x 30cm overlays with text printed in red.
The short titles associated with each image seem incongruous - an image of a young woman in swimming costume with a blanket over her head is noted as "La Belle Hotesse" (the Beautiful Hostess), a priest with a baby is denoted as Intense Souffrance (intense suffering). However the overlays can be moved around and placed over different images - and the titles given new context. Or more accurately the photographs are given new associations with any new text - which one may suggest is the point of the work: an anonymous image is read by a viewer using conscious and unconscious visual cues but when a language descriptor is added new associations are formed and the semantic context changed. Concessions are made.
This is one of only 50 signed and numbered examples on a colophon sheet. VG+

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Munich: Gina Kehayoff Verlag, 1994 24 x 14,5 cm, 88pp. card covers. Artist's book. Facsimiles of portraits of orphans published by the Red Cross in Germany after the war and distributed throughout Germany in order to find those portrayed any relatives that may have survived the war. The artist writes in a foreword that " we also we seek our parents". This copy is one of 77 hand numbered copies which has an original re-photographed advert from the original red cross poster which is signed and numbered in blue ink on the back also. Fine....

Paris, Yvon Lambert Editeur, 1993
Two part blue cardboard box with handwritten title label content of 19 sheets containing Lebensztejn's text "Une rêverie émanée de mes loisirs," each accompanied by an original line drawing by Boltanski on tracing paper.
Each text page is thus overlaid with a drawing; the lines, drawn in 5 color pencils, link letters in the text, with the combinations of letters forming quotations from 5 writers; a letterpress key to the drawings gives the quotations (from Tadeusz Kantor, Federico Fellini, Jacques Demy, the Talmud and Ingmar Bergman) in mirror writing. Each text sheet/drawing pair is enclosed in a green paper folder.
There is an introductory page and a colophon page as well as a sheet explaining the work with the key to the drawings.
Boltanski's intervention into the book finding hidden texts within the larger commentary.
Very good condition with some minor fading to the blue box but internally VG++. Scarce.
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Paris: La Hune, November 1992
33.5 x 24 x 5.5cm, one part archival box with pasted on title label, content of eight folders containing original & reproduced photographs, maps, sketches, photographs, transcripts, and documents relating to the occupants of a destroyed house (bombed by the Allies on 3 February 1945 which killed most of the residents).
For an exhibition in Berlin entitled "Die Endlichkeit der Freiheit", Boltanski initially placed "a series of 12 black and white plaques each mounted on the facing walls, storey by storey, indicating the family name, profession, and period of residency of each tenant who had lived in the bombed out apartments."
At the same time in East Berlin, Boltanski exhibited a series of vitrines with archival documentation of the various families and the building (the research here should be credited to art student, Christiane Büchner and Andreas Fischer). Interestingly during the research Boltanski and his assistants discovered that prior to 1942, many of this obliterated building's inhabitants had been Jews, until they were evicted, and deported to concentration camps.
The folders have around 150 photographs, photocopies, offset and stencil reproductions, postcards, maps, and other facsimile items - the eight folders are:

Folder 1: La Maison Manquante/The Missing House 15, Grosse-Hamburger-Strasse, Sept. 1990. A text in French faces an original colour photograph of the installation with tissue guard.
Folder 2: Autour de la Maison Manquante
Folder 3: Ceux Qui Vivaient au 15, Grosse-Hamburger-Strasse, de 1930 à 1945
Folder 4: Madame Kalies
Folder 5: Kurt Porteset
Folder 6: Monsieur Schnapp
Folder 7: Le 3 Février 1945
Folder 8: Le Cahier de Quittances

This is one of the most difficult to find of later artist's books by Boltanski and certainly one of his most complex productions, the level of research and the requirement to recreate original documents in high quality reproduction must have taken a lot of effort.
As usual there is no moral commentary on the events or people included in the survey of the building, The fact that some residents were Jews is ignored other than mentioned although readers may feel some irony present here. The bomb was neutral in its effect - devastating but uncaring of past history or status. It is a simple record of what happened - and an imperfect record as all historical reconstitution must be
This is one of 100 signed and numbered copies (aside from 20 HC copies) on a label on the inside front cover of the archival box and is in VG+ condition, complete although the two original thick rubber bands that close the folder are missing. A wonderful production.

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